Are you the researcher looking for an interesting PhD position in the field of public health? We are looking for someone, who will further innovate and strengthen utilization of the infectious disease surveillance platform Infectieradar.

Research
In response to the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 in early 2020 Infectieradar was developed (www.infectieradar.nl). Infectieradar is a web-based participatory infectious disease surveillance platform. Participants share weekly whether they experienced symptoms possibly related to an acute respiratory-, food- or water-borne infection and whether they tested themselves for COVID-19 (free COVID self-tests are provided). Furthermore, each week a sample of participants are invited to send in a nose- and throat swab for lab-testing. The platform is part of a European collaboration, and provides real-time insight in the dynamics of infectious diseases.

The position is focused on utilizing data from the participatory infectious disease surveillance platform Infectieradar. The PhD project will focus on the development and application of analytical methods to expand and strengthen the output of this surveillance system. Initial projects will focus on validating the observed time-trends against other sources (such as sewage surveillance, GP-surveillance, hospital surveillance etc.). Other aims are to define disease specific symptom definitions by machine learning, and perform in depth risk-group analysis using state of the art-methods. Depending on the epidemiological situation other projects can however become instantly urgent.

You will have an appointment within the Respiratory Infections department of the Center for Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Surveillance.

Tasks

• Understand the benefits and limitations of participatory infectious disease surveillance.
• Contribute to running and maintaining the platform.
• Perform in depth analysis in R, or in a way compatible with the existing R pipeline.
• Publish and share epidemiological analysis in (international) scientific publications and/or conferences.
• Work both independently, and in a team on your projects.
• Archive code in Git, and prepare code and (meta)data in line with the Open Data initiative at the RIVM.
• Contribute in (inter)national project meetings.

Unique to this position
At this position you will work within an environment of researchers, and will profit from their knowledge and experience. You will learn and contribute to joint efforts to further innovate and improve the utilization of Infectieradar for pubic health.
Performing surveillance, and the subsequent analysis of surveillance data are core competencies of an epidemiologist. Participatory surveillance systems (such as Infectieradar) have proven themselves during the pandemic and are an integral part of the post-pandemic/pandemic preparedness surveillance landscape. This PhD-project is therefore an excellent stepping stone for a career in public health in the Netherlands and/or internationally. Furthermore, the analytical and research skills within this project are highly transferable to other fields.